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Sapphire Pure Black P67 Hydra

05-06-2011, 03:00 AM

Phoronix: Sapphire Pure Black P67 Hydra

When talking about Sapphire Technology on Phoronix it is usually about their vast selection of Radeon graphics cards for which they are very well known and are one of AMD's premiere AIB partners. Recently, they have also expanded to offer a limited selection of high-end AMD and Intel motherboards. Being from Sapphire, these motherboards are not some budget motherboards with nothing to separate them from its competitors, but are rather well designed and very innovative boards. As the first Sapphire motherboard being reviewed under Linux at Phoronix, we are looking at their interesting Sandy Bridge offering: the Sapphire Pure Black P67 Hydra.

If you look closely, you'll see that this is EVGA. From the kind of components used to their placement and the fonts(!) used on the board, everything here proves th`at this is an EVGA board. Remember that story about EVGA motherboard engineers leaving to Sapphire? That's it, you have the proof now.

Comment

I'm not looking for a P67 motherboard, but if I was this doesn't look very interesting. The Hydra won't be used, it uses an old type BIOS and performance is slightly worse than other boards. I don't see the point.

BTW, isn't the hydra supposed to offer multi-gpu rendering across different vendors? Namely using AMD and NVIDIA cards?

Comment

I am in agreement with devius, it is rather disappointing on the part of Sapphire to have opted for what is now an out of date BIOS arrangement and realistically the board isn't offering Linux users anything they can't get elsewhere from a known board manufacturer. I expected more from Sapphire as I use their Graphics Cards and they have delivered exactly what they proclaim and they deliver comparatively quiet use when lined up against their competitors. Where with the graphics cards Sapphire are innovative in this case with the Hydra it is as the review points out, a pretty lacklustre effort. I will stick with my current setup for the time being and await some board manufacturer actually considering Linux Users when they knock their next board up and try marketing it. Alright we may not be the Majority but surely nowadays Linux is becoming so widespread in appliances and the like that Motherboard manufacturers would at least now be taking the whole issue more seriously? Obviously not. I nowadays try to support any company that actively supports Linux and hopefully other users will do the same to start showing that we should not simply be ignored and that our money is as good as the next persons.